Kba President
| Publication year | 2017 |
| Pages | 06 |
Gregory P. Goheen
To know where we are going, we must know where we have been.
Humbled, excited, grateful-words that come to mind as I reflect on the beginning of my term as president of the Kansas Bar Association. It seems appropriate somehow that this year's annual meeting was held in the city of my birth and a place that remains dear to my heart, Manhattan, Kan. My time in office will end, with equal appropriateness, at the annual meeting next summer in Kansas City where I now live and have practiced law for the past 24 years.
I will reach two personal milestones of a sort during the coming year-my 50th year of life and my 25th year as a member of the Kansas Bar. Both seem significant, yet pale in comparison to the years of dedicated service given to our profession by lawyers like John J. Jurcyk, Jr., who was recently honored for 60 years as a member of the Bar. To put that in perspective, his 60-year career spans nearly half of the Kansas Bar Association's 135 years of existence. I owe "Big John," as he is affectionately known by the attorneys in our office, and his son, John David Jurcyk, both of whom served as presidents of the Kansas Bar Foundation, a debt of gratitude for encouraging me to become an active participant in the Bar Association.
I perhaps owe Big John a greater debt for years ago hiring my father, James Goheen, as his law partner in a firm that has always valued the practice of law as a profession. For those of you who knew my father, he was incredibly proud to be a lawyer and absolutely loved the practice of law. Big John is quick to remind me that I am apparently the third attorney from our law firm, McAnany, Van Cleave & Phillips, P.A., to serve as president of the Kansas Bar Association following E.S. McAnany and Tom Van Cleave, Sr. These individuals and others instilled a culture in our firm where being a lawyer carried a responsibility and obligation beyond the workplace. I know from my relationships and interactions with many of you that this culture exists beyond the confines of my firm and is what makes the practice of law in the state of Kansas such a noble and rewarding experience.
The Kansas Bar Association is, in many ways, the thread that binds us together as colleagues, socially, intellectually and professionally. There are and always have been challenges to the practice of law. As most of you know, the...
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